1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the correction of electronic data in a computer environment. More particularly, the invention relates to the correction of address information for the delivery of electronic content in a computer environment.
2. Description of Prior Art
Electronic mail messages, e.g. emails, have been used for communication between users across computer networks, such as the Internet. Typically, a sender composes an email message using a mail client program, such as Outlook Express or Eudora. Some mail client programs provide facilities, such as addresses books, for the management of addresses, including email addresses.
The sender's mail client program typically needs a recipient's email address, e.g. bob@aol.com, that specifies the recipient's username, e.g. bob, and the domain name, e.g. aol.com, of the destination of the composed message. The recipient's email address can be input into the sender's mail client program manually by the sender or established automatically by the sender's mail client program when replying to a prior email received from the recipient. A mail client program may be integrated with an address book, where a sender may include the recipient's nickname and one or more email addresses, such as a work address and one or more private addresses. When a sender is composing an email message, the mail client program may retrieve the recipient's email address from the address book.
Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as America Online (AOL), provide centralized address book services in the form of host-based address books. Host-based address books are stored on the server of an ISP. The user has access to the same address book regardless of the location of the computer on which the user operates. Thus, through network connections, a user can always access the same contact information in the host-based address book, thereby avoiding the need to move the address book between different computers.
After the sender instructs the mail client program to send an email message, the mail client program starts to transmit the email message to a computer according to the recipient's email address, typically through one or more relay servers. After it reaches the destination computer, the email message is typically stored on a storage device on the destination computer in an account associated with the recipient's user name. The recipient may retrieve and review the email message from the destination computer via the recipient's mail client program running on a computer remotely from the destination computer or on the destination computer. For example, the email message can be viewed through a network via a web browser when the email messages are maintained on server computers, such as servers of Yahoo! or Hotmail websites.
Sometimes, however, the message delivery to a recipient's email address may fail. For example, an email address may become invalid permanently or temporarily. An email address may fail permanently because the account for the user of the address is closed or the domain of the email address is changed. An email address may fail temporarily because the usage in the email box exceeds a quota designated for the user. When the delivery to the recipient's email address fails, the message is said to “bounce,” and an error message indicating the nature of the delivery failure is often generated by the destination computer and sent back to the user.
FIG. 1A is a block schematic diagram of a system for updating an address book according to prior art. Referring to FIG. 1, after a user sends an email message to an address (102), an error message may be received when an error occurs in delivering the email message (104). After viewing the error message (106), the user may take actions manually to update the address book (108). For example, the user may remove the address or investigate for a replacement address.
Some mailing tools have been used to send a same email message to a large list of recipients based on a mailing list, for example, a list of email addresses. Some mailing tools provide facilities for removing addresses of bounced mail messages from the mailing list automatically when operating in a client mode to receive the emails to the return address. However, the mailing tools allow only deletions of addresses of bounced mail messages. In addition, the bounced messages typically go to the list owner or the manager, not the sender oneself.
FIG. 1B is a block schematic diagram of a system for updating a telephone number according to prior art. The system for updating a telephone number according to prior art includes a telephone set (110), a telephone switch (112) and a telco recording (114).
A caller dials a telephone number from a telephone set (110), either manually or with the help of a computer-based address book which may also automatically dial the number. Once placed, the call is routed to a telephone switch (112), which determines how to route the call to its destination. If the call can not be completed, for example because the number has been changed, the switch instead routes the call to a telephone company recording, e.g., a telco recording (114), that informs the caller that the number has been disconnected and/or changed. The caller placing the call hears the information and makes the appropriate editions to his/her address book.
It would be advantageous to provide an electronic information updating system that can automatically update address information with some degree of user-interaction and manage address books using the information embedded in bounced email messages.